Is 神 the only word used for "God"?

No. Chinese renders a single English word several ways, and this count is for 神 exactly as segmented. Related words are counted on their own pages, and the site's search finds any of them across all 31,021 verses.

Does the traditional-character text give the same count?

Yes for this word's count, because counting happens on the simplified text and the traditional edition of the same verses differs only in how characters are written — 1,909 distinct characters are written differently, but the words are the same.

How can I learn this word?

The word page carries its pinyin, stroke order, character breakdown and the verses it occurs in, and it can be saved to a flashcard deck and exported to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.

神 Appears 4,361 Times in the Chinese Bible

Answering: “how often does God appear in the Bible”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

神 is one of two words this edition uses where English has 'God'; 上帝 appears in the parallel 上帝 edition of the same translation, a well-known publishing split. The count here is for 神 in the text this site publishes.

Counting is by segmented token: the text is split into words by matching against CC-CEDICT, and every occurrence of 神 as its own word is counted. A verse that uses it twice counts twice in the total and once in the verse count, which is why the two figures differ. Its first occurrence in canonical order is Genesis 1:1.

It is an HSK 5 word, so a learner at that level already knows it.

Every occurrence is reachable on this site: the word page for 神 lists the verses it appears in, and each one opens the chapter with the word highlighted in the reader.

神 in the Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified)

Measure	Value
Occurrences	4,361
Verses containing it	3,710
Books it appears in	63 of 66
Pinyin	shén
HSK level	HSK 5
First occurrence	Genesis 1:1
English gloss (CC-CEDICT)	god; deity; supernatural

Questions

Is 神 the only word used for "God"?: No. Chinese renders a single English word several ways, and this count is for 神 exactly as segmented. Related words are counted on their own pages, and the site's search finds any of them across all 31,021 verses.
Does the traditional-character text give the same count?: Yes for this word's count, because counting happens on the simplified text and the traditional edition of the same verses differs only in how characters are written — 1,909 distinct characters are written differently, but the words are the same.
How can I learn this word?: The word page carries its pinyin, stroke order, character breakdown and the verses it occurs in, and it can be saved to a flashcard deck and exported to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.

Related reference pages

Take it further

97 ready-made vocabulary decks — by HSK level, by book or by topic, exportable to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.
Printable 田字格 worksheets — passages with pinyin, meanings and tracing rows.
The parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side, every word tappable.
The dataset behind these numbers — plain JSON, free to reuse with attribution.

How these numbers were produced

Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain — 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,021 verses.
Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation). A different segmenter gives slightly different word counts; character counts are unaffected.
HSK levels: HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9.
Reading times: 260 characters a minute — an assumption about a fluent adult reader, not a measurement.
Computed: 2026-09-22, from the text on this site.

These are counts anyone can reproduce from the published dataset. They are not a peer-reviewed linguistic study, and the difficulty rankings are one stated formula rather than a validated readability score.

Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). If you share this file onward, keep this notice and share alike. Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).